Photos – Wave Gotik Treffen 2010

This last weekend I was at the Wave Gotik Treffen in Leipzig. It was a fascinating experience. I’m so used to being around camera-shy punks that I honestly was overwhelmed and felt out of place in the runway atmosphere of the festival. But still, I shot some photos. I’ve also become a bit obsessed with photoshop’s “photomerge” capability to automatically make panoramas. So some of these pictures, if you click on them, will give you a much larger version.

Many of the pictures are from the Neo-Victorian picnic, which if you asked me needs a bunch of neo-victorian paupers and punks as well. Maybe next year. Other photos are of Leipzig itself. I found, for example, the perfect park: it has a river (or is it a giant canal?) and it has ruins of old columns, weeping willows, graffiti, empty wading pools, flowers… seriously, it has it all. I’ve only posted one picture of the place I stayed, but I’ll have more photos of that house and its awesome project posted up eventually.

The grainier photos are mostly of the house party I went to the final night, which is the kind of place that even the people who live there don’t seem certain if it’s squatted or not.

And finally, there’s a photo of my friend Courtney, who was one of the only black people in attendance. She was excited about finding a nazi to pose with her, so she could send the picture back to her mom. “Greetings from Germany!”

I’m under the impression that the nazi-looking folks are into it from a kink point of view, not actually as being fascists. But it’s hell of creepy.

yes it’s modern art… same kind i saw in Montevideo but there it was only pins in a row but one was different… i think to understand it’s meaning u have to ask the artist… or u can interpret whatever u want in it… in the end it doesn’t matter fact is u think about it… and that’s maybe all the artist wanted

What beautiful clothes! alas! There should be dark-elf clothing…I’m going to make it. Did you meet any cool people at the festival?

Oh, and the sign. My interpretation: “A sign-forest of 100 positioned parking lot signs. The signs prevent wild parkings and refer to the potential for the creation of a free space with the whistle-blowing qualities of a city park [word play on “park”].” I would interpret that the artist is saying something like “They tell us to stay put with place signs, so I’m putting them in their place by stealing their signs and putting them here so that there’s now a bunch of free parking spots around town.” But maybe I only see it that way because putting city planners in their place sounds good to me.

oh, I suppose putting the interior and the exterior shots next to each other implies that they are the same building. The interior shot is of the house I stayed it, which isn’t squatted: it was bought by a gothy radical who is slowly turning it into a cooperative project. It’s really awesome, actually. The exterior shots are of this giant building that is probably being renovated or demolished, I don’t really know, but it was pretty.